He frowned. These bits and pieces he was getting weren't enough to do anything but increase his confusion. Nor was Rolly's reference to “humans”, which he did not miss.
“No, I don't understand,” he said. “This is one hell of a security layout for a private mansion, not to mention the fact that I've never seen anything like this, anywhere. And I've been around. And you can't, what was it, let your guard down? You're on heightened security? What . . .” He stopped in mid-sentence and stood quietly, thinking, trying to reconcile what he was hearing with what he himself had seen and knew. “Who are you people? And who is she, Aelia?” He raised his eyes to see Rolly watching him, with understanding—and a slight smile.
He let himself be guided out. As they walked back down the corridor, leaving the control center behind them, he noticed that he could see, within what he had thought were only walls, corridors and rooms where people were moving around, or working with technologies he couldn’t clearly discern. The walls here were only semi-transparent, the rooms beyond not much more than shadows. Nor could he see any doors that led in. There seemed to be no breaks in the walls on both his sides other than for the intersections that led to the smaller corridors.
Rolly glanced at him. “You really have no idea who She is, do you?”
Kyle only shook his head.
Rolly chuckled in wonder. “In that case I'd love to have been there, see first-hand what actually made you change sides and get Her here.”
Kyle stopped, astonished. “You know?”
“I know some of it. Benjamin had updated us before . . .” Rolly fell silent, clearly thinking about the man’s death. “Right. Back to your questions. I was there when the two of you arrived because I'm out there more as part of the heightened security, which, as I’ve said, we’ve initiated when we found out about Her, because we knew there was someone after Her, and potentially, then, also after those at Aeterna, especially after we would get Her here. You see, it's complicated to explain why, it is not mine to do, but we have had someone following Aelia for a while.”
“Benjamin Laree.”
“So you did know about him. How do you know his name?”
Kyle reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and took out Laree's passport and wallet. He handed them to Rolly without a word.
Rolly took the items. “I don't understand. How do you have these?”
Kyle explained briefly.
Rolly nodded. “Thank you,” he said, his eyes on the passport he had open on the man’s photo. “Thank you for taking these. Benjamin, he was more of an assistant than a bodyguard. I made a mistake allowing him to follow Her alone for so long. I should have sent someone else earlier, someone better trained. But we were taken by surprise, you see, finding Her this way. And we didn't expect the organization to be there, not so soon.” He looked up at Kyle. “Benjamin saw something in the park, and he called us.” Rolly stopped, not sure how much to say, what this man would think. What he was to know, or already knew.
“I saw it too.”
“You saw it?” Rolly frowned. “How is that even possible? Benjamin of course, but you?” It was his turn to be confused. “Yes, he saw you there, and informed us.”
“So he told you I tried to kill her,” Kyle said evenly.
“He did.”
“What he didn't know is that I made three attempts on her life. Not just the one he saw.”
“And yet you failed to kill Her. And you brought Her here, to us.”
Kyle faced him squarely and held his gaze. “I’m telling you that I was sent to kill Aelia.”
“Yes.” Rolly didn’t waiver.
“And you simply accept that I, what, changed sides?”
“Well, that's a bit more complicated to explain, but yes.”
“You don't seem surprised at any of this.”
“Of course not. We knew that when She would return, the organization would most likely be after Her. And they are in fact the ones who sent you, didn't they? Yes, well, we now suspect they've always known who and where She is. That's the only explanation.”
Kyle was speechless.
Rolly smiled mirthlessly. “They’ve been after us for so long, we’ve always known that if they would know about Her they'd go after Her the moment they thought She was a danger to them, maybe even before that. We just didn’t know they would find out about Her before us, otherwise they never would have managed to take Her from us in the first place. Which begs the question nobody has been able to answer yet—how did they know who She is and how did they get their hands on Her?” He resumed walking, deep in thought.
“Wait. If you know who sent me after her and why, why did you just show me your entire security? Come to think of it, why didn't you just shoot me when you first saw me?”
Rolly halted and looked back at him. “Because I received explicit orders on how to treat you.”
“Who from?”
“The Keeper and the head of the Council, of course. They said to treat you as if you're one of us, and as the man who protected the Light. Do you think I would show our security layout to just anyone?” Rolly returned to Kyle. “Look. Benjamin sent us a photo of you he took on his phone, in the park. We didn't find you in our database of the organization, but we had reasons to be sure they sent you. Head of Council requested to see your photo, and then he requested that you be brought here, alive. The way things turned out, with you switching sides, you made it easy.”
Kyle's confusion only deepened. Keeper? Council? Light? He still had no idea what Rolly was talking about and was about to demand a clear answer when something struck him. “Hang on. You say you know about the organization, about Aelia being a target. My target. Why didn't I ever hear anything about you”—he spread his hands to indicate Aeterna around them—“or about this place?” He shook his head, recollecting, “I was taught she was a danger to us, to humanity. Hell, I grew up thinking that she was my greatest enemy. I was told—”
“I guess you were told what they wanted you to know. Who's my counterpart now, still Jennison, is it? Good old Jennison. One of the smarter ones in the organization. Smart and ruthless. Still heads the training facility, does he?”
Kyle's mind was churning. Everything he'd always considered the absolute truth, told to him by those he trusted the most, was shattering into pieces. He no longer knew what to believe, and anger erupted within him. He wanted to stay, knew there would be answers here—Rolly was certainly being straightforward with him—but he needed to go back, find Jennison. Find the truth and do it now, while there was still hope that Jennison wouldn't expect him to double back and wouldn't increase the facility’s protection, as well as his own, to the point that it would be impossible for Kyle to get to him. Semner was out there looking for them, but if Kyle could do it fast enough . . .
He focused back on Rolly. “I have to go. But I need to know Aelia is safe here.”
“What? Go where? You just arrived, I didn't get a chance to get all the details from you, debrief you properly. And the head of Council, he wanted to speak to you, and we still didn't explain—” He stopped at the look in Kyle’s eyes. “Right. Yes, She's safe here. We’ve always had the Keepers here, so this is our most secure location. And right now, this entire place is focused on Her protection. Everyone here would place themselves between Her and any danger in a heartbeat.”
Kyle didn't budge.
Rolly nodded. “I'll show you.”
He turned right, straight into a transparent wall, and Kyle had no time to react before a doorway formed out of nowhere.
“Okay, that's new,” he said, following Rolly.
“You will learn that not everything is quite what it looks around here,” Rolly remarked. “This is not just an ancient mansion.”
He walked to a hologram of the great house and its grounds that formed in the middle of the room they had entered, and proceeded to give Kyle the practical specifics of the security layout, answering his questions until Kyle finally nodded.
; “It is possible that there is someone else after her,” he said, his eyes on the hologram. “Another organization operative, and he's good. I'd tell you to track incoming traffic into the village, which is as I understand the closest access point to this area, but since he knows me he'll do everything to keep hidden, so I doubt he'll come that way.”
“We'll keep an eye out. But we haven't had anyone try to come here other than through the village. That's the good thing about it, it's the obvious place people who happen to come around here are attracted to, and they don’t usually look beyond it or even suspect that we're here. And Aeterna has supported the village for centuries, so they tend to keep silent about us, and encourage people to stay away.”
“An organization killer has already turned up on your grounds,” Kyle said, meeting Rolly’s eyes. “If I would have wanted, if I hadn't come in openly, with a woman I was protecting, I would have gotten in, and it wouldn't have been through the village.”
“Yes,” Rolly conceded. “You're right. We didn't expect Her to turn up here this way, certainly not so quickly, and not with you. And had you had other intentions . . . yes. Understand, we’ve been safe here for longer than you can imagine. And we had reason to believe that as long as She wasn't back, the organization would stay away.” He paused. “And we thought Benjamin would be the one to bring Her here.”
“I didn't kill him,” Kyle said quietly. “In other circumstances I probably would have. But I didn't.”
Rolly said nothing.
Kyle spoke. He began when he first caught a glimpse of Benjamin at the park and recounted everything that would help the man before him understand how his friend died, that he gave his last breath telling Aelia where to go. But he didn't tell Rolly all of it. He left out what he could still not explain to himself.
Rolly was silent for a long minute. “Thank you.” He held up Benjamin's passport and wallet, which he was still holding in his hand. “And again, thank you for taking these. As I said, Benjamin was not well versed at knowing how to hide his identity, and had the authorities found these it would have raised unwanted questions. As it is, I can return these to his family together with his body.”
“His body?”
Rolly nodded. “We have our methods too, not only the organization. Some of my people were already on their way to help Benjamin secure Aelia and take you in when all this happened. They have managed to, let’s say, have his body misplaced. It is being flown home as we speak.”
“So that's how you know he died.” Kyle looked at the hologram. A thought struck him and his heart beat just that much faster. “Rolly, would the organization know to come here, to Aeterna, even if they weren’t tracking us?”
“They are aware of this place. But they also know of us, and I can tell you they would not so easily come here.” Rolly's tone reminded Kyle that there was still too much he didn’t know. “The question is how quickly they’ll make the connection between you and this place. Assuming your actions and ours prevented them from finding out who Benjamin was, and since they obviously think Aelia has no knowledge of who She is or where She belongs, then, if you weren’t supposed to know about it either . . .”
“They might think we’re on the run without a clear destination? No. I assure you my people—” Kyle’s eyes went ice cold. They weren't his people anymore. “I assure you the organization would ultimately track us here.” He turned to leave the room. “I've got to go back there now. I'll give you the description of the operative I believe might be tracking us. I'm hoping it would take him a while, but keep an eye out for him, he's a dangerous guy.” He turned back to look at Rolly. “And you know there’s a difference between protecting a defined perimeter against an attack and protecting a single person against a designated killer. Put one of your security details on Aelia. I'd put them also on your Keepers or Councils or whoever here you think important.”
“I will. But listen, you've made it clear they know you turned against them. They might kill you.”
“Oh, they will try if they get the chance.” Kyle no longer had a doubt. He just wanted to know why.
There was one more thing he needed to do before he left. “Where is Aelia? I want to see her before I leave.”
“I'll take you to Her.”
Rolly led him to the entry hall of the great house from the inside, and Kyle found himself facing two long staircases that led up, with portraits of women, he vaguely noticed, some seemingly very old, hanging along them. The question rose in his mind of their significance, but he pushed it aside, keeping his mind on the matter at hand. There was no time.
His attention was drawn to a stout woman who was coming down the stairs. Rolly approached her. “Sonea, Mr. Rhys here needs to see Her.”
Sonea halted and looked at Kyle calmly. “The Keeper sent Her up to rest. She will see no one now.”
“Mr. Rhys is the one who brought Her here.”
Sonea's expression changed, and she looked at Kyle with interest. “You are him then, Sir. Yes, I will show you to Her rooms.”
Kyle followed her upstairs, Rolly a step behind. Sonea led them through the plush corridors, but after only a few steps Kyle realized he knew where to go. He stopped at the set of large doors a split second before Sonea did. Glancing at him with unveiled surprise, she turned as if to go in first, then stopped and moved aside, making way for him.
He hesitated.
Abruptly he turned. “Let's go.”
Rolly looked at him, began to speak but reconsidered, instead nodding to himself and following Kyle back downstairs.
“Right. Your destination?”
Kyle specified the location of an airport he'd feel safest getting to in southwestern Arizona. “I need to get there fast and quietly.”
“And return,” Rolly said.
Kyle said nothing.
Rolly frowned. “You sure about this?”
“It's the only way to do this. I need to ascertain who they sent after Aelia and try to stop them from sending anyone else after her.” He paused. “And I need to know the truth.”
Kyle was taken to a stealth helicopter waiting to take him to the airport, where Rolly had one of Aeterna's private jets ready.
In the great house, Aelia started awake. She sat up, tried to understand what was wrong. She got off the bed and walked to the window, where darkness reigned over Aeterna. She didn't even realize that she was searching inside her, until she realized what it was, what was missing.
Kyle was gone.
Chapter Ten
In the house rented by the organization for this mission that had gone so terribly wrong, Semner stood in the second-floor bedroom that Kyle had used while he was there. Kyle's things were strewn around, and the handheld with the information about the target lay on the floor at Semner's feet. Semner looked around him in distaste. He'd been through the woman's apartment twice and through this very room countless times, returning to it again and again obsessively as he waited long hours for news. But there was nothing to indicate where they had gone. And that damn Jason Neace was gone too. Semner had the guard downstairs try to track him down, but no luck yet.
He had a theory about this, though. Jennison had of course warned Neace that Kyle had become a target and that he was sending Semner in, and the guard had said that Neace had left the house not long after he had updated Semner about Kyle's actions. So Neace must’ve gone after the targets himself, for whatever crazy reason. In which case if he actually managed to run into Kyle, he'd be dead by now and probably ended up in a morgue somewhere, unless Kyle bothered to get rid of the body. Ineptitude, Semner thought. He hated ineptitude, and that stupid Neace who had gone rogue, he was sure, was just the picture of it. He looked down at the handheld, then stamped on it angrily, breaking it. Was there anything else that could go wrong?
His phone rang. High time. The cool voice on the other end of the line informed him that the organization had tracked the targets to a flight to Rome. Which meant that they were most likely heading for one
of two places. Semner would shortly have an aircraft waiting for him to take him to Rome, and by the time he'd get there he would be informed which direction to go in, the voice told him. Last chance, it said.
Semner ended the call and looked down at the shattered handheld. Failure was not an option. His life was on the line now, too.
Aeterna's jet waited for Kyle in a private hangar and took off as soon as he was aboard. As he sat alone, away from the security detail Rolly sent along, planning his next moves, he considered the irony of it. It wasn’t so long ago that he was on a very similar jet, on his way to kill the same woman he was now trying to protect. He leaned back and closed his eyes, forcing himself under control. He was impatient to get to Jennison.
Rolly’s assurance that Aeterna's jet would make far better time than the commercial flight, or any other flight Kyle had ever been on, for that matter, proved correct. Kyle was out as soon as it landed, energized by the urgency of this situation he had found himself in and by his own anger. Every part of him that the organization had cultivated was fully alert, and he was focused on his new mission.
He himself would by now be the organization's target, and he knew Jennison had good people. People Kyle had trained with, others whom he himself had trained. And Jennison himself would be well protected, both in the facility's headquarters and in his home. However, Kyle did have the element of surprise on his side. He also had knowledge, and a lot of it, about how the organization worked, and how Jennison thought. They were both very single-minded when it came to Aelia, which led to a lack of flexibility in their thinking. For them she was a danger like no other, which, when the time came, had to be relentlessly pursued. This was their Achilles' heel. Jennison, Kyle expected, would still blindly focus all thought on her, not on Kyle.
His anger flared. Putting that into the context of what he had seen at Aeterna, the bits and pieces he had time to learn from Rolly, and most of all the time he had spent with Aelia, he understood just how much had been hidden from him, how much he had been lied to. That was the one thing he knew for sure, did not doubt. That he had been lied to by the organization and Jennison. He had time, during the flight, to think about Jennison's recent actions, and about the fact that the first time he had raised a question about the mission and about Aelia's identity, Jennison had written him off and targeted him alongside her. This was unlike Jennison—Kyle had argued with him before about missions and targets, and had even changed missions while they were already in progress, and Jennison had always let him get away with a lot. With anything, really. So why now?
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